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This is some audacious spin. What actually happened: Pompeo endorsed the results of a rigged election in DRC after a private security company working for a Congolese autocrat back channelled with Giuliani and other Trump allies. Our investigation: https://t.co/WjO7hPmfZv

 In negotiations, the US maintained it wouldn't allow then-DRC president Joseph Kabila to run for a third term. So the private security company, Mer, helped Kabila craft a new plan to control his country: a secret power-sharing deal with another candidate. https://t.co/WjO7hPmfZv
The deal might've stayed secret—except somebody leaked the real vote count, showing Kabila's candidate, Tshisekedi, lost in a landslide to Martin Fayulu, who vowed to end corrupt mining deals. @FinancialTimes did great work confirming the data was legit: https://t.co/gmXYAHVlJD
With the real results public, the US was left with the question of whether to endorse the official result or denounce it, as the African Union and the European Union did. US officials in charge of DRC foreign policy debated. Here's how it played out:
US has a long history of undermining democracy in Congo. CIA backed the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, DRC's 1st prime minister. US presidents supported Mobutu's 34-yr dictatorship. Kabila won US support the way other modern-day autocrats have: with the facade of democracy.
The result: “We don’t have the apparatus of control over security and armed forces,” said a Tshisekedi administration official. Kabila “has people in charge in those places.”
US officials who favored endorsing the DRC election called it a pragmatic decision at a perilous moment. A Mer operative said: “Both sides have compromised on something. The United States compromised on the process; Kabila compromised on the end result.” https://t.co/WjO7hP4EAV
Kabila paid Mer $9.5m to lobby for him in DC. The firm hired 27 Americans onto the project. But it had a secret: It supplied surveillance tech that helped Kabila crack down on protests. One consultant Mer hired said if he had known that, “I absolutely would not have said yes.”
Kabila first turned to Mer in 2012, when Kinshasa hosted a conference drawing leaders from around the world. Mer’s services constituted the biggest upgrade in surveillance capabilities that Congo had seen, cost $17.75m, & helped police stamp out demonstrations.
By 2015, with tech from Mer, Huawei, & other companies, the DRC’s surveillance state was targeting dissidents more effectively. “Everything they knew in advance,” said one activist. “Everywhere we are going, everything we are planning.”
This double act—promising a free election in Congo while selling the tools that could undermine the country’s democracy—was unheard of. It all took place behind the curtain, in meetings & phone calls that left few witnesses & little trace of private influences involved.
"When the history of the Trump administration is written, much will be made of the president undermining democracy at home. But as the Congo episode shows, he also did so abroad." How a private security company lobbied the US to accept a rigged election: https://t.co/WjO7hPmfZv

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The Balkanization of Africa has long been a strategic aim of several foreign powers. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, a US foreign policy theoretician and top adviser to US President Barack Obama stated, a divided and warring Nigeria ultimately serves the interests of the United States.


The initial intention of the powers that be in covertly supporting Boko Haram was to destabilize Nigeria, trigger sectarian divisions and violence, and then rush in to ‘save’ Nigeria under the banner of military assistance and humanitarian aid. Today the powers that be


..has essentially created a conflict intervention industry. Some are testing and exhibiting new weapons system. Others are flexing their diplomatic influence. Private military contractors are securing lucrative contracts, with Russia leading the pack in this field with its


"Little green men" in Libya and Mozambique. Not to be left out Eric Prince, the founder of U.S based Blackwater, travelled to Abuja where he met with Nigeria's President and offered to destroy Boko Haram for a fee of US$1.5 billion. That offer was rejected. See the dynamics?

They criticized Eeben Barlows STTP involvement in Nigeria and then used the back door to try cut a $1.5 billion deal with the Nigerian government. Abuja chose the South African based Special Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection (STTEP) International Ltd.
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On this day in 2007, the bomb blasts in Samjhauta Express killed 68 people including 44 Pakistanis. The immediate investigations revealed irrefutable evidence about the masterminds. In this thread, I would share some Indian newspaper clips which covered the investigations.


1. Lt Col Prasad Purohit, a serving Indian army officer, was arrested for terror conspiracy in the Malegaon blast case. He was the co founder of Abhinav Bharat, a right wing Hindu organisation. He admitted that he was the mastermind.

(The Times of India, Pune, 7 November 2008)


2. Lt Col Purohit met Pragya Thakur on 5 Oct 2008 to tell her that "Our People" had carried out the killings in Orissa, burnt down two churches and also carried out the Malegaon blast.

(The Indian Express, Pune, 24 Nov 2008)

Ironically, Pragya is BJP's MP today.


3. During his narco analysis test, Lt Col Purohit told officers that Praveen Togadia was responsible for the “Samjhauta Express Blasts”. He asked me to find out from Dr Dev, how much RDX was remaining after the blast.

(Pune Mirror, 19 Nov 2008)

4. In his narco analysis test, Lt Col Purohit gave sensational information that he supplied explosives for Ajmer and Malegaon blasts at the instance of Mahant Dayanand Pandey.

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Bad China Takes
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@BadChinaTake
I'll bite, Mr. Gray. We can even play by your rather finicky rules.

Let's begin with some of the things you have said about Xinjiang, notably absent from your more recent media appearances, but still present in your blog about your 2014 biking trip.


The following is taken from an ongoing list I keep of people who have been to Xinjiang and written/spoken about their experiences. It is separate from the testimony of detainees and their relatives I also keep. Jerry is on this

Jerry, your article for CGTN, as well as your various Medium pieces, belabor themselves to emphasize the smoothness of your time in Xinjiang. Why did you leave out so many details from your log of your 2014 trip? They seem relevant.

For example, would CGTN not let you speak about Shanshan, the town that evidently disturbed you so much?


Why, pray tell, after noting how kind and hospitable Xinjiang police were to you in 2019 for CGTN—and how you were never told where you could or could not go—would you omit these details?
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Arash Azizi
Arash Azizi
@arash_tehran
Iranian Reformist Front (Jebheye Eslathalabane Iran) was officially founded yesterday in Jamaran, Khomeini's historic house near Tehran.

The founding meeting elected Behzad Nabavi as an interim head since he is oldest.

And also 5 people as a committee to draft the IRF's by-laws


The five are:

1- Outspoken Tehran MP @mah_sadeghi
2- Faraj Komijani, politician with a base in an official teachers union
3- Ali Bagheri (low-key politician)
4- @MansooriAzar , noted reformist politician
5- Rouhani's ex-VP @mowlaverdi

Some more pictures of the meeting.

The next meeting of the group is on Wednesday and will be held virtually.

The top question remains whether and who (and how many candidates) to run for the coming #IranElections2021


The founding statement says the reformists will run a single candidate agreed by all reformist parties but only if elections are to be "free, legal, competitive, just and constitutional"... which is obviously not what's going to happen!

The founding statement also includes big demands like call for a referendum to revise the constitution. But as usual these big words aren't followed by any actions.
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Bellingcat
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@bellingcat
Bellingcat and its investigative partners have established that Russian politician, Vladimir Kara Murza, was followed by a specialist FSB team prior to his suspected poisonings in 2015 and 2017.

Members of the same FSB team, some of whom have medical and chemical weapons backgrounds, tailed Alexey Navalny before he was poisoned with a Novichok substance in August 2020.

Kara-Murza is a well-known Russian politician, film-maker and an outspoken critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The circumstances around his suspected poisonings have long remained a mystery.

Travel details of FSB team members show they followed Kara-Murza on a campaign trip outside Moscow that ended less than 48 hours before his first poisoning incident in May 2015.


Kara-Murza recovered in the US before returning to Russia. Yet the same team began tailing him again just five months after he came back. He was poisoned for the second time in February 2017.
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